My First Special Issue :-D

If you've got the latest Special Issue from Paper Crafts Magazine - Holiday Cards and More Volume 8 - then please turn to page 66 as you'll see my first ever project to make it into a Special Issue :-D

Now this one is particularly special for me as it uses what are probably my all time favourite stamp sets - the wonderful Way out West and Back in the Saddle sets from Waltzingmouse - living in the middle of England, there's not much call for cowboys, but for some reason I just LOVE working with these sets so am thrilled to bits that I managed to get a card published with them.  Like the first time I made it into the magazine the card is also on kraft - also a love of mine so I guess it must be lucky for me.  The challenge for this submission was to make a Christmas card without using any Christmas imges - you were only allowed a single Christmas sentiment.

Here's a closer shot

It was simply a case of masking the top half of the cardstock and stamping the yonder star background in crumb cake ink for a tone on tone background onto which I stamped the row of stars which each got a tiny yellow gemstone centre.  I then stamped two of the backgrounds from Way out West onto the area I'd masked off.  The far hills in crumb cake and the foreground in chocolate pearl.  I added the cowboy on top in the same ink.  The yonder star sentiment was embossed in gold with a gemstone star and some glitter in the sky.   I edged the whole panel with gold ink and then added a couple of rows of twine and finished with a matching bow.

Cowboy script

I'm not having a good day today - I've been having headaches which it turns out are due to high blood pressure so I was put on meds yesterday which are making me throw up and swell up too - oh joy!  I was looking forward to a quiet day of crafting but feel to dizzy to sit up properly.  I did manage this weeks's Less is More challenge before the tablets kicked in as it was a nice easy one layer card....

The challenge was to feature script on your card other than your sentiment, so I went straight to my favourite Waltzingmouse sets which are all about cowboys.  I embossed the background border and the cowboy in black to form a silhouette and then used the background text border twice just with versamark ink to create a watermark effect which I think shows up brilliantly on kraft.  I embossed one of the senitments above to finish it off and add balance.